


The Show Must Go Wrong

by noodlefrog



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Theatre, And he looks great dressed in all black, Aziraphale Has a Cat, Backstage, But Crowley really likes watching Aziraphale work, Co-workers, Competence Kink, Don't copy to another site, First Kiss, Getting Together, Good AUmens AU Festival, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, I hope, I made a spreadsheet for this fic yall, I'll tag as they become important, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Low-Stakes Drama, M/M, Minor Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Minor Hastur/Ligur (Good Omens), Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rated T for some language and alcohol and maybe some minor injuries, Roommates, Slice of Life, Stage Thespians, Stuck on the same sinking ship of a production together, Technical theatre, The play is a trash fire, This fic has basically the whole cast of the show/book, University Theatre Professors, but!, except not really a kink because there's no smut here, i forgot to tag, mild to moderate, oh no, the author is a former theatre kid and is suffering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24670411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlefrog/pseuds/noodlefrog
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley are theatrical designers. Technicians.Professionals.More specifically, they are underpaid and overworked adjunct professors employed by an underfunded university theatre department. Crowley is also sleeping on Aziraphale’s futon in a completely platonic way, like colleagues do. Because they’re friends. There are absolutely no other feelings there. Nope.What follows is the account of“Armageddon,”the disastrous summer production that will have them at their wits end—and also in constant, high-stress proximity to one another—as they work to bring about the end of the world.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 54
Kudos: 74
Collections: Good AUmens AU Fest





	The Show Must Go Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> “The natural condition [of the theatre business] is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.” –Philip Henslowe, _Shakespeare in Love_ (1998)  
> Title shamelessly yoinked from a _Parks and Recreation_ gag riffing on a well-known theatre truism/Queen song title.  
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> My familiarity with uni-level educational theatre is specific to the US, so for the sake of simplicity, that’s the setting I’ve given this fic. This story is both a love letter to an art form I miss and a form of free therapy to deal with the baggage I’m left with after leaving the profession. Any similarity with any real thespians, living or dead, is unintentional but also probably unavoidable due to the fact that the profession is, in many ways, a hive mind. As we all know, all college theatre programs are linked together by an ancient blood curse that dooms every company to have a Gabe, a Newt, and/or a Hastur. If your program had all three at the same time, I send you my heartfelt condolences.

One of the fluorescent lights overhead was flickering, casting the far corner of the room into shadow in an erratic pattern that was worsening the headache already building somewhere just behind Crowley’s eyebrow. It was giving off a high-pitched electrical whine that only dogs should be able to hear, or teenagers—wasn’t that a thing? Playing high frequency sound to make loitering teens too annoyed to, uh, loiter? Point was, Crowley could hear it, and it was putting his teeth on edge.

“You’re glowering,” Aziraphale said, not looking up as he arranged the papers in his binder. “Have some more coffee. It might help.”

Crowley had been working his way through his travel mug most of the morning. It helped. It couldn’t be argued that it didn’t. But neither could it be argued that Crowley was built to be awake at this time of day. The only time they could arrange for this preliminary production meeting that fit everyone’s schedules was eight o’clock in the fucking morning, and Aziraphale, consummate professional that he was, had insisted that they arrive a half hour early. Somehow, they’d even managed to be early to being early and had gotten to the theatre at 7:18 AM. As he looked around at the empty chairs in the room, Crowley took another long drink of admittedly good coffee and longed for death.

The first of the production crew arrived, chugging an energy drink and tossing a full tote bag into their chair with enough force to scoot it back across the linoleum by several inches. They looked irritated as Hell and close to death from exhaustion, though Crowley was unsure if that was because it was so early, because it was midway through finals week, or because graduate school just did that to a person. Then again, Bee always looked like that, so it was possible that it was a personality trait.

Bee—or _Pat Beesle_ , as they had it on Facebook, production programs, and other places that required more than a single one-syllable name—was pure productivity and spite condensed down into a five-foot tall frame with a choppy haircut that said to people, _“I am willing to use scissors in a violent manner, so back the fuck off.”_ Crowley had only worked with them as a stage manager once before and had found them to be competent if not especially personable.

“Good morning, Bee!” Aziraphale said, smiling at them. Bee grunted in acknowledgement as they downed the remainder of their energy drink, tossed the can, and pulled a second out of their bag. Crowley did not miss the way Aziraphale’s eyes widened slightly in alarm.

“You’re early,” they said, their voice flat, as they dug through their bag for something.

“Ten minutes early is five minutes late,” he answered, his tone uncomfortably close to singsong. Really, how was he this functional this early?

Bee checked their phone. “It’s 7:38.”

“That’s what I told him,” Crowley said, stretching his legs under the table. “But he insisted on getting up while it was still dark out.”

There was a flicker of something like interest in those all but lifeless eyes as Bee paused in their search to look at him, then at Aziraphale. “Did you guys… arrive together?”

Crowley groaned internally as Aziraphale made a production of looking shocked. “Really, my dear, I think that is a personal matter.” Bees’ eyebrows shot up, hidden somewhere behind their bangs.

“My lease ended,” Crowley supplied, trying to make it sound as boring as possible. Because it was. It was incredibly boring and not at all a sign of anything more significant. “Aziraphale’s letting me sleep on his futon until I can find somewhere else.”

Bee shrugged. “Look. It’s not my business what my professors get up to in their spare time—”

“Correct,” Crowley said.

“—any more than it’s your business what I do when I’m not here.” They produced an external webcam from the bag and set to work untangling the cord.

The door to the classroom banged open and one of the undergrads backed inside carrying two full cardboard coffee carriers stacked on top of each other.

“Coffee?” He asked, giving a nervous smile as he set the drinks down on the table.

Crowley took one, nodded at him, and poured it into his thermos to top off what he’d already drunk. As he went to throw away the cup, he realized he recognized the student. Eric… something or other. First year student, fresh out of high school. Crowley hadn’t had him in class yet, but this was the kid who had cried in Crowley’s office back in September. It was always an awkward experience when that happened, and Crowley always tried to forget it as soon as it was over, but Eric had been his first cryer in this new job, and it was over something stupid enough to be memorable. Apparently, the scene shop had sent him to go look for a board stretcher and he’d gotten overwhelmed when he had, of course, been unable to find it. From that moment, Crowley had pegged the kid as hardworking but easy to take advantage of… and those coffees made him suspicious.

“Bee, you didn’t make him get these, did you?” He asked, eyes narrowing. “Eric, you know the ASM isn’t required to get coffee for the crew, right?”

“No, I didn’t _make_ him,” Bee scoffed, hooking up the camera to their laptop.

“Did you buy these?” Aziraphale asked, peering at the campus coffee shop logo on the side of the cups.

“Sort of?” Eric set his backpack down in the seat next to Bees’. “I had fifty bucks left over on my meal plan and it doesn’t roll over to next year, so I’ve been getting a lot of coffee this week.”

“Have you been eating enough, Eric?” Aziraphale pressed, and the kid shrank under the intensity of that pale gray gaze.

“Yes, sir. It’s just… well, the cafeteria closes at ten on weeknights and most of the time rehearsals don’t get out until eleven, so I usually only eat there on the weekends.” Eric, noticing Aziraphale’s growing expression of outrage, began to ramble faster. “But I’m fine! My roommate steals a lot of food from the cafeteria anyway—quesadillas in his binder, thermos full of milk from the cereal stand, you know the drill—so there’s always a lot to eat in the fridge.”

“If you’re sure.” Aziraphale smiled at Eric, then shot Crowley a look that he just _knew_ meant that they’d be cooking extra spaghetti the rest of the summer term. Typical Aziraphale. He’d always adopted the strays—Crowley included.

Anathema Device and Newton Pulsifer were the next two to make it to the classroom. Crowley knew Anathema from the grad level costume history class he taught this semester, and liked her well enough, but he’d never worked with Newt. From what he understood, Newt had joined the department at the semester break and had been some kind of STEM major before this, but beyond those two facts, Crowley didn’t know much about him.

“Did you hear,” Aziraphale whispered as the grad students put down their bags and helped Bee wrestle down the classroom’s ancient projector screen. “They’ve started dating.”

Make that three facts. Crowley gave a noncommittal hum as he watched Newt let go of the screen cord and send it clattering back up into the ceiling, stumble backwards into a table, and knock Bee’s webcam off onto the floor. He also made a mental note to double check that the first aid kits were stocked. Anathema was a good student, and by all accounts was a competent technician, but Crowley didn’t know if she’d be able to keep her new boyfriend from injuring himself or others if he was given access to power tools.

Predictably, Hastur and Ligur arrived late. Predictably, they took two of Eric’s coffees without a word, and did not help set anything up. Those two were a matched set, an inseparable pair of weirdos, and Crowley couldn’t stand either of them. Ligur ran the lighting loft like it was his own personal duchy, and Hastur—the bastard with the board stretcher—ruled over the scene shop. Crowley would never forget walking past them on their smoke break on the dock and overhearing Ligur ask what “OSHA” meant. Hastur, without missing a beat, had replied, “It’s an anagram. It means _shipshape._ ”

According to Aziraphale, they’d entered the department’s PhD program nearly a decade ago and had managed to make careers of their shop supervisor positions by never actually graduating. Hastur, as it happened, had just managed to leverage himself a new job as an adjunct professor. Much to their displeasure, Crowley and Aziraphale had been informed earlier in the week that he would be the third staff member on their team to teach the summer term’s Stage Production course. Crowley would have said he dreaded that prospect completely, but he knew that working with Hastur would also provide a fruitful bitching opportunity with Aziraphale which would, at least, be a little fun.

“Well, let’s get started,” Bee said, when everyone had taken a seat.

“Where’s the director?” Crowley asked.

When the department head had announced that they’d hired a guest director for the last show of the season, Crowley’s curiosity had been tentatively piqued. Neither he nor Aziraphale had ever worked with her before, but the production photos they’d seen when Crowley creeped on her Facebook page had looked excitingly _avant garde._ Dr. Joyce Godwin had come highly recommended, and probably as a direct consequence of that, she also had not come cheap. That was why, in Crowley’s cynical opinion, the department had opted to hand the summer term over to the adjuncts—they were cheaper and desperate for the work. Well. That was probably one of the reasons, at least. There was also a scheduling conflict with a conference during the run of show when the full-time professors would be out of town.

“Unfortunately, she emailed late last night to say that her travel plans have had to be pushed back. She won’t be in town until Friday for auditions, and she asked me to film the first production meeting for her.” Bee gestured towards the (thankfully undamaged) webcam and then glared at Newt, who grimaced. “So, this is everyone.”

There was a rustling as around the room everyone began to pull out notebooks and pens and the scripts they’d all been working with over the last few weeks. Some, like Aziraphale’s, were already impressively crammed with sticky notes. Looking to his left, Crowley noticed that Ligur’s had what look looked like a bite mark pressed into the corner of its glossy red cover. He resolved not to ask.

Bee pulled a sheet of paper out of their binder and cleared their throat.

“I’m going to pass around the contact sheet, and I need you all to check next to your name if everything’s accurate. If you have a new phone number, or want to use a different name, write it on the back.” The sheet made its way around the table and stopped at Hastur. He put his hand up. “Yes?”

“I need to use a different email address. I don’t check that one.”

Bee stared at him. “That’s your school email.”

“Yeah. I never check it.”

“…Don’t you teach now, Hastur?”

Hastur shrugged as he finished writing something on the page and passed it on to Ligur. “Yep.”

Ligur checked off next to his name and slid the contact sheet over to Crowley. His eyes were immediately drawn to the wobbly handwriting in the margin of the page beside Hastur’s name.

_Kermit_Arson_666@hotmail.com_

There were several things Crowley wanted to ask, starting with, _who uses Hotmail in 2020?_ The answer to that question was clearly _Hastur LaVista,_ which was somewhat unsurprising, so instead he asked, “Kermit Arson?”

“That’s his stage name,” Ligur all but growled.

“You have a stage name? But… don’t you work backstage?” Newt asked, and it was obvious that the unspoken follow-up to that question was, _was I also supposed to come up with a stage name?_

“We’re getting off topic,” Bee announced, the flat drone of their voice cutting through the chatter. They fiddled with their laptop for a moment, and a light on the side of the webcam lit up. “Right. Well, we all know who we are and what we’re doing, but let’s go around the table and introduce ourselves for the video.”

One by one, they addressed the camera rather awkwardly, and Crowley realized with a growing sense of dread that _everyone_ seemed to be pulling double duty, not just him and Aziraphale.

“Anathema Device. Hair and makeup designer. I’m also the teaching assistant for the Stage Production course.”

“Newton Pulsifer. I’m the video and projection designer, and I’m supervising the box office this summer.”

“Hastur LaVista. Scenic designer. Shop foreman. M’also teaching one of the sections of Stage Production.”

“Ligur Calumma. Lighting designer and master electrician for the summer term.”

“Anthony Crowley. Just call me Crowley, though. Costume design and shop supervisor. Also teaching this summer.”

“Aziraphale Fell, adjunct professor of Theatre History and Dramaturgy, though this summer I will be supervising the properties shop and teaching the third section of Stage Production. I will also be the properties designer, master of arms, and stage combat coordinator for the summer production.”

“Right,” Bee said, awkwardly turning the camera around to point at their face. “I’m Bee. I’m your stage manager, but you knew that already. Eric?”

Eric waved. “I’m Eric Legionnaire, I’m your assistant stage manager, and I’m very excited to be here!”

“Cool,” they said, putting the camera down even before he’d finished speaking. “Who’s up first?”

The production meeting was, as Crowley had feared, kind of a clusterfuck. Hastur and Ligur hadn’t seemed to have prepared very much in advance. The set design sketches were done in sharpie on a yellow legal pad. Ligur’s presentation consisted only of vague babbling about the department’s new smart lights, holding up individual gel sheets from his Roscolux swatch book, and doing a poor job of not smirking when he said the words _“bastard amber.”_ Anathema’s research PowerPoint had been thorough if a bit idealistic in terms of her faith in the department’s existing stock of wigs, most of which Crowley knew should have been thrown out years ago due to mishandling and excessive Ben Nye buildup in the hairline. Newt broke the projector somehow and spent his time trying to describe the logistics of printing costs and stock video purchasing options without the help of any visual aids. Aziraphale, old fashioned as he was, had prepared his research images on poster board and talked at length about the necessity of wrist-strengthening exercises while Eric frantically tried to fix the classroom computer in the background. By the time he got it working again and Crowley was able to show his own research and preliminary sketches, the coffee was all gone and everyone seemed seconds away from falling asleep in their chairs.

He left the meeting feeling a sense of growing trepidation for the coming weeks. Most everyone seemed to have a conflicting vision for the aesthetics and tone of Agnes Nutter’s _“Armageddon.”_ Even if they managed to find some way to harmonize Hastur’s vision of a splatter-painted monolith with Crowley’s careful adherence to 14th century realism, the budget numbers were incompatible. It would help if he had any sort of idea of what their director was looking for. As it was, she was a complete mystery. Crowley had worked with a lot of different kinds of directors in his career. Some had been authoritarian types who wanted control of every aspect of every design. Others had been very hands-off, spending all their time working with the actors and essentially letting the designers do whatever they wanted. Both extremes could be incredibly frustrating, and he was a bit anxious to find out where on the spectrum Dr. Godwin fell.

* * *

  
The good thing about finals week was that Crowley got five whole days in a row where he was guaranteed to go home while the sun was still up. Well. Not _home._ To Aziraphale’s house. But it was still nice, as was the excuse to give his friend a ride back after work.

4:30 pm—practically the middle of the day—saw the two of them in Aziraphale’s kitchen cooking a dinner that actually required multiple steps of preparation and real vegetables. The combination of sunlight from the window over the sink and the promise of a balanced meal not cooked in a microwave had Crowley feeling distinctly like a functional adult, something that happened with uncomfortable rarity for a man of his age.

Aziraphale was a marvelous cook when he was given the opportunity, and his knife skills were the kind of thing Crowley could watch forever on a loop. Well. He could if he was some kind of a creep. Which he wasn’t. People didn’t do that to their friends—coworkers. So, he watched his hands in a normal, platonic way and idly contemplated the notion that if Aziraphale ever decided he was tired of teaching, he could always have a backup career making those soap cutting videos.

5:00 pm—still early, still sunny—saw them relocated to the living room. It was Crowley’s temporary bedroom, too, all his clothes shoved haphazardly into his suitcases which had been shoved haphazardly under the futon. Crowley was skimming through final papers on his laptop, while over at the table Aziraphale was making notes in the margins of his students’ paper copies. It was a comfortable kind of silence, companionable, and if Crowley were to get caught looking up from his screen with a far-off look on his face he knew he could just say he was trying to figure out what grade to give something.

The smell of eggplant parmesan was getting strong enough to overpower the constant scent of patchouli drifting through the vents from the B side of the duplex, and also strong enough to awaken the lady of the house from her slumber. She announced her arrival to the living room with one of her trademark meows—weird, low-pitched, and garbled—and seemed confused and annoyed that they were breaking routine by being here and active before nightfall.

Aristophanes was an ancient cat. Crowley remembered her from his own college days, and if the way she draped herself across his lap like one of those clocks in a Salvador Dali painting was any indication, she remembered him, too. She’d been Aziraphale’s secret dorm room pet, and Crowley had smuggled cat food in for her in his backpack, all the time teasing his friend for adopting a white cat when he was working as a stage tech. _You’re going to single handedly keep the lint roller industry afloat,_ he remembered saying, and he remembered how Aziraphale had laughed. She’d been so little then, and for all Crowley’s twenty-something cynical posturing, he hadn’t been able to pretend like she wasn’t cute.

Fifteen years had passed since then, fifteen years where Crowley lived out of motels following professional gigs, and they had fallen out of touch. Crowley had looked for him online later, but of course, Aziraphale wasn’t the type to use social media. It had come as a total surprise to find him again. People had always said that the theatre business was a small world, but he hadn’t known Aziraphale worked at EGU when he applied for the adjunct position last summer, hadn’t known until he was already hired. He’d just gotten so tired of sleeping somewhere new every month, of living out of his suitcases, of competing with people half his age for scraps of work. If he had known crossing paths with Aziraphale was a possibility, he would have come back to academia years ago.

Aziraphale had seemed happy to see him again, to restart their friendship like there had never been any time apart. They had coffee in the green room together between classes, ate greasy burgers after work calls, drove to thrift shops on the weekends in Crowley’s car to pick up costume pieces and props. And then, just as Crowley’s lease at his shithole apartment was coming due for renewal, just as he was staring down the reduced pay of the summer term, Aziraphale had swept in with an offer. The duplex. A futon. A fat white cat with a growly little meow. A back porch that would fit his plants. Room in the shed for whatever plastic furniture he’d picked up in the last year.

This was how Crowley lived now, he guessed. Stage blacks covered in white cat hair. Healthy food during finals week and most weekends outside of show weeks. Classical music from the record player while they graded papers. Exerting constant effort to keep from telling Aziraphale everything he’d been too scared to say in 2005, everything that would be too awkward to say fifteen years later, especially to someone he now both lived and worked with.

He was only going to be here for eight weeks. Once _Armageddon_ closed, he’d have the time to find another apartment and would get out of Aziraphale’s hair. In the meantime, though, he was going to make this count.

**Author's Note:**

> I am not even going to pretend like this fic will have anything approximating an update schedule. It’s 2020 and everything is terrible. But! I always finish what I start, and that’s the Noodlefrog Guarantee™. You know, unless I die or something. In which case, feel free to finish this fic in your imagination with whatever ending you like best.  
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> This fic was written for the [Good AUmens event](https://go-events.tumblr.com) for the prompt “Broadway/Stage Thespian,” and I totally ignored the Broadway part of that.
> 
> If you feel like chatting, pull up a seat and lurk with me in the comments section. Otherwise, you can reach me on my [tumblr.](https://noodlefrog-omens.tumblr.com) If you want something to tide you over between updates, or you were thinking to yourself, “I want to read something long winded and sad,” my other currently updating multichapter boi is this [monstrous bastard.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1578430)


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